The Puzzle Pro: Retopo With Sprite Fright's Expert

Angela Guenette is a character modeller specializing in topology and facial blendshapes. If anyone knows about the intricacies of 3D, it's Angela: she's been in the field since 2000, including stints on multiple Open Movies. For Sprite Fright, Angela focuses on retopology.

Retoplogy is an integral part of animated filmmaking. It's the art and craft of taking a high polygon model and optimizing it for rigging. Many artists find retopo intimidating: it requires a monk's composure and a mathematician's logic. But Angela was never daunted. "The process is very much like solving a puzzle," she says. "It's methodical, requires patience, and once completed feels rewarding because it helps facilitate a smooth animation pipeline."

The subtle art of retopo, a worm's eye view.

Retopo For Noobs

New to retopology? Here's Angela's take on the most fundamental of fundamentals:

1. Efficient topology is an essential part of modelling for an animated production.
2. Aim for topology that simply serves its purpose.
3. Start by blocking down the most important areas first, then fill the spaces in between, adding more details as needed.
4. Maintain evenly spaced quads, hide minimal triangles in non-deforming areas.
5. Blender's Edit Mode 'Edge->Mark Seam' can be used as guides to help organize topology direction.

More deft edge-wrangling, this time including a shape key for Sprite Fright's protagonist, Ellie.

Retopo showing quads for boot crease, and tiny triangles on non-deforming tip.

Sprite Fright Retopology: An Epic Series

And if you're a little further along the retopology path, Angela has a multi-part timelapse series on her work, all applied to Sprite Fright's characters.

Here's an extract. Watch it as is to get an overview, or slow it way down to absorb every click and tweak.

A snippet from Angela's retopo series. Best watched at 0.5x speed.

For more of Angela, have a look at her mighty course right here on Blender Cloud: Blenderella, Advanced Character Modeling.

And if that somehow hasn't satiated your need to command every crease, try this packed series on stylized characters. As well as hours of lessons, it includes cheat sheets, downloadable files, and even add-ons to accelerate your workflow.

And, of course, check out the production logs for weekly retopo updates.